Step into the shoes

Trishla and Rajeev Surana, co-founders at Colour Me Mad, tell us about their naturally made footwear products and how cork improves body posture, and reduces knee and ankle pain.

With fashion making greater use of natural material to ensure your comfort and well-being, Colour Me Mad has come up with footwear that marries design with health. An affordable footwear brand, it believes in providing you with correct footwear made from natural products. It creates quirky prints and designs and infuses a lot of pop colours as well. The range of footwear varies from flip flops to flats, wedges and also includes printed straps and bottoms.

The footwear is made with cork — one of the best materials used for footwear. Cork is a natural material, extracted from the tree and has healing properties for the feet, like it improves body posture, reduces knee and ankle pain, and takes shape of one’s feet.

Co-founder and designer at Colour Me Mad, Trishla Surana, says, “I always had a keen interest in design and colours, which gave rise to Colour Me Mad, where I can customise footwear as per my design and also play with colours. The natural properties of the material cork in footwear makes it lightweight, soft but durable, expandable, flexible, and anti-static. Due to these properties, it’s widely used in orthopaedic footwear. Cork footwear is very popular in Europe but it’s a relatively new concept in India.” The brand is co-founded by Rajeev Surana.

Telling us more about cork and why it is ideal for manufacturing footwear, Trishla says, “Cork is breathable so wearing such a footwear will not make your feet smell. Besides, it helps to evenly distribute one’s weight hence ensuring correct body posture which reduces knee, ankle and back pain. However, cork being brittle has to be mixed with rubber which increases its weight but keeps the footwear sturdy.”

When asked how the brand keeps up with the latest trends and styles in footwear, the duo point out that they have a complete range of footwear for women including flats and heels, and they recently launched their first unisex range of flip flops called Flipee. “We regularly travel globally to places like Dubai and Milan which gives us the exposure to the latest trends internationally and, most importantly, we listen to our customers and take feedback seriously,” says Rajeev.

Talking about the challenges, he adds, “Since India has an unorganised footwear industry, manufacturing world class footwear in India is a challenge and requires intense training to be provided to artisans to make such footwear. So on the one hand, we need to be creative in providing new products and on the other, it is a completely different challenge to market the products and scale the business.”

Quirkiness is one of the core features of the brand. Telling us more about it, Trishla explains, “We believe in offering quirky prints which are distinct and make our products stand out from the rest. In fact, we can spot our customers from a distance and that’s what quirkiness means to us. Colour Me Mad combines fashion with health which is a unique combination and we urge people to ‘Healthy#Fi your Feet.’”

And what’s coming up next? “We will be launching footcare products in the future to compliment footwear,” says Trishla.
Colour Me Mad is available at www.colourmemad.com and focusing on other digital platforms as well.